


send your dreams where nobody hides (give your tears to the tide)

by sunflowerabbit



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, hunk pidge and keith are mentioned, i guess??, lance has a bad dream and coran is there to help thats it thats the story, might be part of a bigger thing im working on, or s1??, set somewhere in S2, whereever that episode w alfor's hologram is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:57:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerabbit/pseuds/sunflowerabbit
Summary: Lance wakes after an unsettling dream, and goes to the bridge to cool off. Coran helps.





	send your dreams where nobody hides (give your tears to the tide)

**Author's Note:**

> alright, so im literally here posting this immediately after writing it--fresh off the press, my dudes. this took about three hours of straight, direct typing--no editing, no proofreading so..forgive my sins lmao. it is 4 am. i was sick of cramming requirements and m83 came on my playlist and i opened up a doc and it just...happened. enjoy (or not, i dont tell u what to do)
> 
> p.s. first bit is a dream sequence, so it might sound a little weird lol

“Hey, Hunk, can you—“

“Not now, Lance,” Hunk says irritably, green headphones around his head. He’s tapping a pen against the side of his cheek, staring intently at his laptop. Hunk’s little pastel yellow minifan whirs on the desk, moving closer to the edge of the desk as it hums and vibrates. Hunk pushes it back a little behind a pile of textbooks and notebooks.

“I just wanna borrow the headphones. . .” Lance whines, trying to drape himself over Hunk’s lap. “C’mon—wait—wait wait wait. _Wait_ —what in the name of Keith’s unholy mullet are you _watching_?”

“Arusians,” Hunk says simply, writing down something on a notepad. “It’s research.”

“It’s—a soap opera?” Lance blinks rapidly, feeling like if he blinked hard enough, he’d make some sense out of—“A Spanish soap opera? Arusians speak Spanish?”

“Aliens, man.”

“Um. Okay.”

Hunk goes back to ignoring him. The lady (?) Arusian clutches at her pearls and yells at her husband as he pushes her, sending her rolling down a flight of stairs. Hunk grunts and makes another note on his pad.

“Okay, I’ll just. . .leave you to your little. . .research.  . .thing.” Lance makes a vague flapping gesture with his hand, booking it out of their room. He blinks again—he’s staring at the Castle hallway wall, with its magic alien torches. He turns around, a finger pointing in the direction of his and Hunk’s shared room as he frowns and looks back and forth between the wall and the standard Garrison barracks door.

“Huh.” He says to himself, eyebrows raised. He shrugs and turns, only to get blindsided by a small figure in green and white armor. 

“Oh—woah, where’s the fire, Pidgeotto?” Lance laughs, holding his arms out to steady Pidge. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of head—“

“Not now, Lance!” Pidge barks, slipping out of his grasp and dashing down the castle corridor. “I’m rounding up the yelmores!”

“The what?” Lance calls out, although Pidge is already disappearing around a corner. “THE WHAT?”

His yell echoes in the empty space.

“Jeez,” Lance mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck.

He turns and—

“Hey, want some headphones?” A training bot with a freakin’— _trenchcoat_ —holds one side of it out to display an array of multicolored headphones. Lance takes one look at it and shrieks. “Yeah, I know, _neon_ , right, but it’s half off!”

Lance just continues to scream, turning on his heel and scrambling down the corridor.

“Hey!” The training bot hollers behind him. Strangely, it has Coran’s voice. “Wait up!”

“WHAT THE CHEESE, DUDE,” Lance yells at particularly no one. He sees an open door with warm light spilling out of it, and his sneakers skid as he grips the doorframe to turn.

Suddenly he’s in the hallway leading up to his room at home, except it’s much longer than he remembers—he dares a look over his shoulder, and feels his breath hitch as he spies a glimpse of the training bot. It’s bigger, and now it kinda has a face. Lance only needed a split second of wide, open mouth with red-stained _teeth_ before looking away.

He keeps running, flinging his bedroom door open into—

Lance doesn’t hear his own scream as the open void of freaking _space_ claims it. His hand catches onto the doorframe, and he hangs on for dear life.

He’s facing the corridor again, back the way he came, but the bot is gone.

“HELP!” Lance shrieks as loud as he can. His voice breaks on a sob. “PLEASE! SOME—KEITH! KEITH!”

He thinks he sees a head dark hair at the end of the hall. His fingers are slipping. He tries to dig his nails in, and feels tiny pinpricks of pain, the first real physical emotion he’s had—a mounting sense of terror at the sensation of _pain_ grips him, making his head spin, and—

-

Suddenly he’s tumbling off of something soft, white and neon teal blurring in front of his eyes.

“Holy—“ Lance goes quiet as he hits the ground, curling into himself and squeezing his eyes shut. He breathes in deep, waiting for the swell of pain in his lower back to crest and fade into a muted throb.

“Ow.” He says.

Prying his eyes open, he finds that one is blocked by part of his blanket. He wrestles with the mess tangled around his body for a while, finally ripping it off and hurling it at the desk.

Still short of breath, Lance tries to calm himself down.

“Okay, Lancey Lance,” He says lowly, “Just—breathe, breathe.”

He brings a hand to his tailbone, trying to massage the hurt area.

“Maybe some water,” He murmurs to himself, “and ice. Okay.”

He struggles to his feet, warily glancing around his room. After seeing that everything is in order, aside from the wad of blanket over the desk and chair, he sighs.

“What the hell.”

-

He steps out into the bridge cautiously, looking around suspiciously. Empty. Lance sighs in relief.

Clutching his three glasses of water, he hurries past Allura’s station, past Shiro’s station and Coran’s—to the space before the viewscreen.

He sets the water down and settles, cross-legged.

“Okay,” He mumbles, staring hard at the stars. “You had a bad dream. A _weird_ dream,” He amends, vaguely recalling something about a Spanish soap opera with Arusians.

And something about headphones, but that wasn’t important. Lance has had some weird dreams—nothing will ever top the one where he was chased around an amusement park by the Power Rangers, horror slash thriller movie style, and the yellow ranger turned out to be that guy from Supernatural. Or the one with the cannibals and the Night Before Christmas—that was a close second.

But he’s never—Lance draws his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on the knobs of his knees. He feels colder than usual. He’s never—

“Number Three?”

“ _Gu-wahh!!_ ” Lance sorta yells, sorta shrieks, and turns to see Coran staring down at him.

“You alright, m’boy?” Coran asks, too cheery for this time of—Lance frowns. There’s no night and day in space. Is it 3 AM or 5 PM? Do they even keep track? Does AM or PM even apply—

“Lance?” Coran asks again.

“How do we know when the day ends and starts?” Lance blurts.

“Ah—well,” Coran says, scratching his head, “While in space, we call them movements. There are 20 vargas in a movement, and right now we are—about a varga away from a new movement.”

“Oh.” Lance says simply. “Cool.”

“Say, why do you humans keep using temperature to refer to things?” Coran asks. “Hot, cold, cool! Is there a connotation for warm?”

“Um,” Lance says as Coran hunkers down beside him. “Well, I guess—there are, like, feelings associated with tempere—tempara—“

“Temperature,” Coran supplies.

“Uh, yeah, totally what I was going for, right,” Lance says, feeling his face heat. “I just—I have trouble with English and pronouncing sometimes.”

Coran nods. Lance remembers that he was saying something at the expectant look on his face.

“Right, yeah, feelings—hot as a general term means, uh—attractive? I guess. And cold means like, an ice queen or something. ’Cause, I guess cold equals numb, so—absence of feeling?” Lance looks up to the ceiling thoughtfully. “And cool—okay, I have no idea how to explain that one. Cool means, like, _awesome_ or something, basically. And yeah, I don’t know how it can be different from cold’s connotation when they’re so similar in a literal sense. English is weird.”

Coran nods seriously, stroking his mustache pensively. “Fascinating! You put meaning in symbolism even in such a thing as heat and coldness.”

“Yeah, it’s, yeah,” Lance laughs softly.

“Cool, I daresay?” Coran winks.

“Look at you,” Lance smiles crookedly, “You’ll be human-ing like a pro before you know it.”

Coran laughs heartily. Lance shifts, stretching his legs out and staring at his blue lion slippers. He has no idea if Coran likes silence or chattering better, or if he finds small talk awkward or relieving. Lance tries to make a mental list of possible topics and questions—Did the old paladins wear these clothes? Is he wearing some old dead guy’s robe and fuzzy slippers? How did the Alteans manage to create _everything_ to last for over ten thousand years? Humans could take a page out of that one, the plastic and waste issue was still big on Earth—

“So, Number Three,” Coran beats him to it. “What brings you here?”

Never one to beat around the bush, that good ol’ Coran.

“Um, well—“ Lance’s voice lilts higher on the last syllable. “I kinda—I had a. . .”

“Yes?”

Lance’s face flushes and he draws his knees up. “Ihadabaddream.”

“Huh?”

“I had a bad dream!” Lance yells defensively, hunching over and hiding half his face behind his knees. “Or—like, a weird dream. But it was—bad.”

“Oh,” Coran says. “That’s alright. Well, I mean, it’s alright to have scary dreams.”

“I know that,” Lance mutters. “I’m not embarrassed or anything.”

“As you should,” Coran agrees, “But talking about it can help, I find. Is it the same with humans?”

“Um. Depends, I guess.” Lance says. His shoulders relax. “For me—um. Yeah. Kinda.”

“Well, then talk away, my dear paladin.” Coran smiles, shifting to mirror his position, although he doesn’t draw his knees up as tightly as Lance does.

For a moment, Lance considers saying ‘ _nah, man, I’m good_ ’ or something like that. But, honestly, he’s still a little shook, and Coran’s face is open and inviting. And he has such a good, wise guy aura, like, Lance doesn’t know, Dumbledore or that old guy in the Lord of the Rings series. Or, like, Yoda.

“I don’t remember much of it,” Lance starts, a little too soft because he can see Coran leaning into his space a little to hear better. He clears his throat. “Something about soap operas and headphones, at first. Then a training bot showed up and chased me down, and I opened a door and it was _space_.”

Lance has his hands up, fingers curled all angular and sharp in a parody of holding something. “And, I don’t know, man, I’ve had gory dreams. I’ve been hurt in them, but this time it was different.”

“How so?”

“I felt it,” Lance says, and he’s surprised to feel telltale pricks in his eyes. “Like—I _really_ felt it. I was holding onto the doorframe, and I tried to hold on harder, and my nails were—that feeling like they’re gonna snap off or something. And I—I don’t know. I felt really, really scared, and I wanted to wake up so bad that I _did_. I’ve never felt so scared in a dream before that I woke myself up—it always just happens.”

When he looks, Coran is giving him some sort of— _sad_ look.

“What?” Lance’s tone is less questioning and more snappish.

“Hm? Oh, no, sorry, I’m just thinking.” Coran says. “You said—you were pulled into space?”

“Yeah.”

“Then—“ Coran gestures grandly to the expanse of the bridge, at the viewscreen showing the stars. “Why are you here, of all places?”

“Oh—uh—“ Lance squirms. “I don’t—I’ve always looked at the sky after a weird dream. It was comforting.”

“Was?”

“I don’t know,” Lance says uncomfortably, “Now it’s a little, I don’t know. Back then I found it, cool I guess, how it was so big and stuff. Now it’s—it’s a little scary. But—I don’t really know what else to do, so. . .Yeah.”

He continues talking before Coran can get a word in. “I mean—ridiculous, right? I’m a pilot, I was studying in a _space academy_ , for Christ’s sake! I used to spend time out on the roof, trying to figure out constellations. I’ve dreamt of this—of exploring the universe and all that stuff. And then this happened, and then. . .”

“And then the war,” Coran says.

“And then the war,” Lance repeats. He bites his lip. “And. . .I guess. . .you remember that other day? Um, movement, sorry—when the Castle got haunted by Allura’s dad’s ghost?”

“Yes?”

“Well, after I got locked in the cryopod, the Castle—there was this thing with an airlock. I got trapped in and—I kinda nearly got sucked out into space.” Lance swallows. “If—If Keith hadn’t pulled me up my dead body would probably be floating around in space right now.

“And—before Keith grabbed me, I looked out and—space was—it was so _big_. And wide, and it was right behind me. And I’ve always,” Lance laughs, his vision blurring a little as he looks out of the viewscreen, “I’ve always felt safe looking at the stars, or whatever—but then I realized, I realized that space is—it’s not—we put so much meaning on things, humans. And I guess I realized that space wasn’t _home_ or _safe_ , and, I don’t know,” Lance scrubs at his eyes. “That space was—was a _thing_ , I guess, it’s not—ugh.”

He laughs wetly, trying to hide his face from Coran by holding up a hand to cover his face. “Sorry to ruin my handsome image, hah.”

Coran simply reaches out and places a hand on his back. It’s warm and grounding. “It’s alright to cry, Lance.”

Lance sniffs and leans into it. Coran rubs his back as he talks, scooting closer.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Coran says, “how humans interpret things. I myself am considered quite the sentimental fool, by Altean standards. Which is rich, considering how Alfor himself was the same—those lions are chock full of symbolism, if I do say so myself. But, anyway—Number Three—like I was saying, interpretations. Space is wide, as you said so, and vast. The universe can be comforting and— _cold_ , unforgiving. In a way, I think it makes it like us, in a way. Paradoxical and conflicting,” he says thoughtfully, shifting to throw his arm around Lance’s shoulders. “It’s alright to be wary, or scared—encouraged, even! The universe can be a dangerous place. Take your time. The stars will still be there for you to decide.”

Lance breathes in and out, hesitating before leaning his head gingerly on Coran’s shoulder. He brings up a hand to swipe at a few stray tears quickly. “Okay.”

“And if you find this—“ Coran makes a sweeping gesture at the viewscreen with his free hand, “too overwhelming, my door is just down the hall.”

“I—I might take you up on that.” Lance says quietly. “Hey, uh, thanks. Really. It—it helped.”

“That makes me glad,” Coran replies, chuckling. “Sometimes I am not so sure of what I’m saying.”

“That makes two of us,” Lance jokes. “Don’t worry, dude, you’re being a really cool space uncle right now.”

“A cool space uncle,” Coran repeats, and Lance can hear the smile in his voice. “I am quite honored to receive this title!”

Lance grins, sniffing and shifting to accommodate his head better on Coran’s shoulder. “Don’t say so just yet—space uncle responsibilities include putting up with weepy paladins tiring out your shoulder and all that junk.”

“And I tend to these responsibilities with the utmost of pride.” Coran says. “My shoulders are well-trained! I have shouldered many a time with these. You’re on good shoulders, m’boy.”

“Dude,” Lance laughs.

He tires himself to sleep like that, answering Coran’s questions about human culture and asking some of his own. (The robe and fuzzy slippers were ten thousand years old but unused, apparently. The previous Blue Paladin never used them for some reason.)

-

Later, Lance wakes to the Castle alarm in his bed, the blanket tucked up to just under his chin. At breakfast, he makes sure to compliment the goo and agree without complaint when Allura assigns him to cryopod duty with Coran for the day—movement.

“Space nephew duties,” He says to Coran with a smile and a pair of finger guns, and Coran beams.

**Author's Note:**

> comments sustain me. btw this might become part of a bigger verse that im writing, so...yeah. stay tuned? or smth


End file.
